What would happen if your daily walk became a practice for energy, balance, breath, and a clearer mind?

In this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement, Steven Sashen speaks with Dr. Jacques MoraMarco, Co-Founder of the International Sun Tai Chi Association, and Dr. Yun Kim, Founder of Emperor’s Wellness, who share the movement principles behind their book, Walking Your Way to Vitality. They introduce six walking practices that integrate natural movement with breathwork, mindful awareness, Tai Chi, Qigong, balance training, and traditional walking techniques. Together, they explain how to start with simple, accessible practices and build a regular walking routine that feels more focused, energizing, and enjoyable.

Key Takeaways:
→ Walking can become more intentional when you add breath, posture, awareness, and attention to your body’s movement.
→ The widely cited 10,000-step target was a marketing concept, so a sustainable daily movement goal matters more than chasing a single universal number.
→ Mindful walking invites you to shift your attention away from past regrets and future worries and toward your breath, feet, and surroundings.
→ Mindfulness is not about forcing thoughts to disappear; it is about gently bringing attention back to the present when the mind wanders.
→ Tai Chi-inspired animal walks can offer accessible ways to improve balance, weight shifting, posture, and fall-prevention skills.

Dr. Jacques MoraMarco, a doctor of traditional East Asian medicine, has been a licensed acupuncturist since 1977 and took the first acupuncture licensing examination in California. He apprenticed with See Han Kim, a renowned teacher of traditional East Asian medicine who trained in a monastic setting. He completed his postgraduate work at the École d’Acupuncture in Paris. From 1994 to 2004, he studied Sun tai chi with Sun Shurong in Beijing, China, and is a fourth-generation lineage holder of Sun tai chi. He is a cofounder of the International Sun Tai Chi Association. Dr. MoraMarco is dean emeritus at the former Emperor’s College of Traditional East Asian

Dr. Yun Kim is the founder of Emperor’s Wellness, a traditional East Asian medicine doctor, a fifth-generation Sun tai chi lineage student, and a mindful meditation practitioner for the past twenty years. A licensed acupuncturist in California, she completed her doctoral clinical rotation at the VA Greater Los Angeles Health System’s PTSD clinic and maintains an acupuncture practice in Los Angeles. She earned her Doctor of Education from the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education.

Connect With Dr. MoraMarco and Dr. Kim:
Website: https://www.suntaichi.com/
https://www.emperors.edu/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EmperorsCollege
X: https://www.facebook.com/EmperorsCollege

Connect with Steven:
Xero Shoes: https://xeroshoes.com/ 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/xeroshoes/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/xeroshoes
X: https://x.com/xeroshoes

Episode Transcript

Steven Sashen
Do you know these six different ways you can walk? No, of course you don’t. That’s why we’re on this episode of the podcast, the Movement. Movement Podcast. The podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body. Starting feet first, those things at the end of your legs that are your foundation. We also break down the propaganda, the mythology, sometimes the flat out lies you’ve been told about what it takes to run, walk, hike, do yoga, CrossFit, Tai Chi, whatever it is you like to do and to do that effectively and enjoyably and efficiently and. Wait, did I say enjoyably? Trick question. No, I did. Because if you’re not enjoying something, you’re not going to keep it up. So find something that you enjoy and do that. We call this the movement. Movement. Because we. That includes you. More about that in a second. No obligation. No, not easy. It’s really easy. We are creating a movement around natural movement, letting your body do what it was made to do. And the way you can participate is really simple. Head over to our website, jointhemovementmovement.com. you don’t need to do anything to join, that’s just the domain we got. But you’ll find all the previous episodes, of which there are a lot. The ways you can find us in social media, the ways that you can pick up the podcast somewhere other than where you just got it. Now, if you feel the urge to do that. Okay, let us get started. I’m really looking forward to this call for a bunch of reasons. So you and Jacques, do me a favor, tell people who you are and why you think you’re here.

Yun Kim
Well, we’re here because we’re author of this wonderful book called Walking youg Way to Vitality. And we’ll talk about the walks that we introduce in this book and how to live a life full of health and vitality. So I’ll have Dr. MoraMarco start first because he has had 50 years of experience in the area of East Asian medicine and martial arts and qigong and Tai chi.

Jacques MoraMarco
Yes. So thank you again for having us, Steven, today to discuss a few of our ideas that we want to share. Something that we have experienced experience personally, but also something that we talked to our students and our patients over the last half a century.

Steven Sashen
Well, I’m looking forward to. I want to give you a little bit of context just for the fun of it. When I got an email about the two of you and I got your book and thank you. I. I’m to Be totally honest. I’m three quarters of the way through because it showed up right when I went on vacation and I forgot to bring it with me. So. But it’s. But for anyone who’s going to get it, easy read. It’s. You can get through it quickly. But more importantly, there’s things you can do to practice, and that’s what we’re going to get to. But right before I got the email, I happened to have a conversation, totally coincidentally, with a very old friend of mine.

Steven Sashen
We’ve now known each other for. I’m 64. How old? For well over. Holy moly. For over 40 years. He was my tai chi teacher, and I was. I taught tai chi way back when. Oh, this is a guy who. When I met him, he had been doing Tai Chi for 22 years. He was 27 at the time. So. And I bring this up for. With one other thing that might become relevant in our conversation. He. He learned tai chi from one of the students of Changman Ching. And the whole thing was like, let’s make this for real.

Steven Sashen
This isn’t just about relaxing. This isn’t just about whatever. This is an actual fighting art. And so we. That involves being properly aligned and relaxed and tense where you want to be, relaxed where you want to be. But it was all about not faking anything. It was all about, what do we know for real. And let’s leave anything where people can argue with us by the wayside.

Steven Sashen
I’ll give you one last thing. That’s a story that was really fun. And anyway, he had this ability for people who are into tai chi. You’ll know what I say when I know what I mean when I say this. And they would refer to it as Golden Bell covering. Now, what it felt like. And I don’t want to try and add mythology to it, but it was a weird thing where you could hit Eric kind of anywhere but his face. And it had this weird feeling like somehow he had redirected your hand to the ground. It literally felt like something had changed. And he would go to karate schools and say, why don’t you just hit me as hard as you can or kick me as hard as you can wherever you want other than my face. I’ll stand on one leg and just see what happens. And people would hit and kick him until they were worn out.

Steven Sashen
And then he was just still standing there. And he’d say, maybe there’s something wrong with your practice. Anyway, so I come at this and we did aikido with the same, oh, intention of like, what’s for real. What’s just biomechanics. It doesn’t need any mythology. And by the way, the problem with my being initiated into both tai chi and aikido this way is I thought everybody was like that.

Steven Sashen
And so when I was on the road, I was doing stand up comedy at the time. I’d go to dojos or do tai chi with people and we do tai chi and do push hands, and they couldn’t move me, and I was able to push them effortlessly. We got to go to aikido dojos and they couldn’t move me, and I was able to throw them without having a problem. And they would get really mad at me because I wasn’t playing by the rules, so. But I didn’t know there were rules. I didn’t know that the guy who couldn’t move me was the guy. It was his dojo. And so actually, wait, sorry. I’ll let you talk, I promise you, right after this. The most amazing aikido move I ever made, or maybe tai chi move, I’m not sure which. I was in an elevator with Steven Seagal and three of his people, casting director’s office. And I said to him, so, hey, you’ve got this new dojo out in la.

Steven Sashen
I’ve been at the first one now you have the new one? He goes, yeah, yeah, we do. I said, yeah, people are going there, you know, really looking forward to seeing you and training with you and. And he goes, yeah. And I go, it’s been open for like six months and you haven’t even been there yet. The air got sucked out of the room like nothing I’ve ever seen before. And his three people were just, like, terrified. And he looked at me with this look that was half, I should kill you, but that was very well played.

Jacques MoraMarco
So that wasn’t. It wasn’t the one on the La Cienega and.

Steven Sashen
No, no, no, no, that was. That was the original. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That place was crazy fun.

Jacques MoraMarco
That puts me that. Then you know how old I am.

Steven Sashen
Well, ditto. I already told you, I’m 64. So, you know.

Jacques MoraMarco
Here you go.

Steven Sashen
So, anyway, I’m really, really intrigued by. By your book. So why don’t you start with the simple thing of if you want to do an overview or the how you came to it, whichever makes the most sense for you, and then we’ll dive into the specifics so people can experience it and have some fun.

Jacques MoraMarco
Yeah, I. I think, let me just, you know, without getting too much of a background about myself, I’m a doctor of East Asian medicine. I’ve been in practice for 50 years. So I took the very first exam here in California, 1977. That’s, that’s a long time ago.

Yun Kim
Acupuncture licensing exam in California. Yes.

Jacques MoraMarco
So, yeah, so been in practice with, you know, I did the traditional Japanese arts and the Chinese arts. I was able to go to China and study with Sun Churong, who is the granddaughter of Sun Lutang. That was one of the key exponent of the three internal style, the Tai Chi, Shingi and Bagua. So I was very, very fortunate to be induced in their family style after about 10 years of practice. So, you know, that was a whole experience being in China back in the early 90s. It wasn’t like today, you know, nobody spoke English.

Steven Sashen
Well, I was there in 89. Oh, you were not gonna, I’m not gonna try and one up you. But I was there in Beijing in 89, in June. Let’s leave it at that for now.

Jacques MoraMarco
Wow. Oh, okay. I got it, I got it. I know my history. So thank you for being alive.

Steven Sashen
Still after that it was, it was pretty iffy for a while. There were six guys, 20 machine guns on my head for a little bit of time.

Yun Kim
It was.

Jacques MoraMarco
Yeah, yeah.

Steven Sashen
Life changing.

Jacques MoraMarco
Yes, yes. So, yeah, so what, what this, what the background on the book is, is that in the mid-80s there was the AIDS epidemic which some of our listeners might have heard about. But you know, it was a very difficult time for all our HIV at that time. We’re full blown AIDS patients. They basically had an 18 months life expectancy and living in Palm Springs and having my practicing Palm Spring. I started teaching a early morning qigong anti chi class. And one of the walks that we discussed in the book, which is called the Immunity walk, it’s originally called, comes from the practitioner called Guo Lin. She was a very famous artist in China and had terminal cancer, went into remission. Now it’s been incorporated as a supportive therapy, adjunct therapy for cancer patient. So she developed this type of walking techniques where you do breath and movement. And some of these patients that were given 18 months are actually alive still today. They were able to survive for about 10 years until the medications came about. So that was the original inspiration on, on my first book, which was called the Way of Walking, came out in the year 2000, I think was ahead of its time. Most people were not aware of Tai Chi and qigong was basically coming as a, as a practice in this country. And you know, the term breath work wasn’t around. Yeah, there was pranayama, but people didn’t refer to as breath work Qigong, barely heard. And so we incorporated some of these ideas in the last 25 years teaching students or Eastern medicine students, and then came up with this walking away to Vitality, which incorporates a lot of elements of the older style with newer technology, like the drone technology and the QR codes in there and Dr. Yoon’s contributions. So your contributions, what brought you about?

Yun Kim
I was very honored to ask to be the co author of this book and help update and put in new research. So much research in the last decade on the benefits of Tai Chi and qigong and mindfulness and that that is my passion. So about two decades ago, I started to meditate. I started to learn about mindful meditation. And I had the great fortune of doing a retreat with a great Zen, Vietnamese Zen teacher and peace activist, Thich Nhat Hanh at his retreat center in California. And his signature teaching was walking meditation. It’s a wonderful book called Peace with Every Step. And we did a beautiful walking meditation from the meditation hall up to the hill. 200 plus retreatants in silence. And it was incredible. It was such a profound experience. And he emanated peace. And I thought that’s, that’s what I want. I, you know, I want to incorporate this into my life. And so I love walking meditation. I’m so glad that that’s part of this chap. And in all of these walks, the secret sauce is the mindfulness. It’s the awareness of the present moment. And so when Dr. Mormarko would teach Tai Chi, he would always tell the students, this is not just choreography. We have to be in the body, we have to be in the present moment. We have to feel the breath, we have to feel the shifting of the weight. We have to feel the feet on the ground, you have to feel the arms. And so that’s a critical component of these sort of new but ancient walks that we introduce in the book.

Steven Sashen
And one of the things that you already said, and I want to highlight it, there are a lot of people who do various practices that are either as authentic as they think they might be from Eastern medicine, sometimes, let’s say more or less so, and I’m trying to kind of say this, there are many people who promise the world and deliver much, much less. The way you described what happened with the age patients by. You didn’t say, you know, everybody was miraculously healed. And you didn’t leave out the fact that once the medication became available, that was a Big deal. And that was something actually that I got in looking at your book, is that you are not saying this is a panacea for all things. And yet there. There’s an underlying something that I would say, you know, can’t. It certainly can’t hurt and it certainly can be supportive. But, you know, I mean, the number of times where my wife tells the most amazing story where she had spent a lot of money seeing every acupuncturist, every qigong person, every whatever person who couldn’t help with something that she had, and finally, out of frustration, one of them said, why don’t you just go see an endocrinologist? And he did her blood work and said, yeah, you have like, no progesterone. And so she took a pill and the next day went, well, that’s $50,000 that I didn’ to spend. So I just appreciate that you’re coming at this with a not evangelical, you know, monomaniacal, myopic sort of viewpoint.

Jacques MoraMarco
Yeah.

Yun Kim
You know, I mean, what we talk about is one component of health. It’s not the end all and be all. Movement and mindfulness are incredibly important. But in order to age well and gracefully, we need the dietetics, we need potentially supplements, medication, spirituality, community purpose. So these are all factors of good health. It’s not just one thing. Of course, movement is really important. Sedentary lifestyle is a risk factor for all the chronic diseases.

Steven Sashen
Right. Absolutely.

Jacques MoraMarco
No, no. I just wanted to say, Dr. Yun and I went to a conference in Boston a few years back. Just before the pandemic, one of the very famous professors from Harvard said one key word and I want you to share it with our audience.

Yun Kim
I went to a conference of the association of Medical Qigong and Tai Chi Association. One of the presenters was presenting on Tai Chi, the health effects of tai chi in PubMed. There’s probably 1200, 1200 articles on health benefits of Tai Chi. Everything from cancer support, wound healing, depression, arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, all prevention, all, you know, covered by Tai Chi. Said if there was a drug that did all of those Things and was $100,000, everyone would get it. So, I mean, Tai Chi, maybe it could be a panacea. Actually, there are just so many, so many benefits.

Steven Sashen
There is one little fly in the ointment.

Jacques MoraMarco
So.

Steven Sashen
So I’ve also. I started meditating. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How? I mean, Again, this is 50 years ago, and I have a friend here in town who used to be at the National Institutes of Mental Health, and now he’s at The Naropa University doing research on meditation. And we became friends because I heard about him and I said, hey, let’s take a walk. And the first thing I said to him is, you know, most of the research in meditation is just really horrible and without missing a be. Oh yeah, there’s no controls and everyone’s really determined to prove that what they believe is true. So that’s a bit of a problem. So with, I mean, there are. I’m not trying to undermine the benefits to Tai Chi at all. And a lot of that research has no, no or bad controls. Everyone is kind of, you know, there’s a little, a little motivation for it. So it’s one of these things in my world, in the barefoot shoe world or the, the natural movement world, more accurately, there’s sort of the opposite version where the people who want to prove that we’re completely full of it, they say things like, well, we got some people who, to get them used to running barefoot, let them train for five minutes on a treadmill. It’s like, yeah, no, that’s not it. So, so I’m always grain of saltish when it comes to research and even to the point where there’s some research that was, quote, anti barefoot, where the, the research said that there was 12 accomplished barefoot runners that were used in the study. And I’m, and I said to the guy who did the research, I know all the barefoot runners in town. I’m one of the barefoot runners in town. And neither I nor any of those other people that I know were in your study. I know who was in your study. They’re not accomplished barefoot runners. But the only way I knew that is because it’s my community in my literal geographic area. So all that said is it’s one of these things. I say that mostly because when we start talking about some of the things we’re going to get more into, it’s not uncommon for people to have some objection, often a little knee jerk. But I just want to, you know, sort of throw out there that, like, I didn’t, I didn’t look at any of the studies that you referenced in the book because I didn’t have time. And the only reason for doing it would be to see how well they’re designed and designing a good study. As you both know, not easy. So. But again, that doesn’t undermine or that doesn’t really undercut the value of the things we’re going to talk about. But it’s again, this is more kind of a. What’s the word? You know, sort of a buyer beware thing. Not about you per se, but just in general. It’s like, you know, one of the things that I think is hopefully valuable about this podcast is getting people to learn how to think about these things rather than just hear them and nod if they say if it’s a good story. So I know you have more than just a good story.

Yun Kim
And we have both, yes, personal experience. And we’ve also, we’ve looked at the research and Dr. Mormarko and I are, you know, we practice Tai chi daily. I completed a thousand day challenge during the pandemic. So I speak from personal experience and I know that it has transform my life and my health.

Steven Sashen
Yeah, there’s. There’s also, I mean, at the same time there’s also this sort of. There’s a meditation story. A friend of mine died a number of years ago.

Jacques MoraMarco
Was.

Steven Sashen
Was supposed to be the principal teacher to take this one meditation technique out of Burma from his teacher around the world because the teacher, the original teacher, couldn’t leave Burma and now Myanmar, now Burma then. And I ended up getting a pamphlet that was some letters back and forth between from his teacher to another student, an American woman. And I gave this pamphlet to my friend. His name was Robert Hover. And Robert called me and said, I didn’t know that my teacher, Ubakin, I didn’t know he even knew these things. I said, how is that possible? You were supposed to take over the whole kit and caboodle. He goes, because I’m all about awareness, just moment to moment awareness. And this person’s all about concentration, about sustained focus. I can’t do that. She couldn’t do what I do. So he never taught me the part that I couldn’t do. So, you know, there’s that.

Jacques MoraMarco
I like that.

Steven Sashen
Well, oh, that’s good. He had five key students. Each one of them taught differently based on how he taught them. And there was a weird period of time where I was the one passing messages between them because they had stopped talking to each other. It’s very odd conflicts within. Within organizations. So let jump in if you want to do the overview of things. Then we can dive into the specifics, which will be really fun.

Jacques MoraMarco
Yeah, you know, so. So just the overview of the book. We take it from the traditional walk. What we have a first chapter. What is the traditional walk? We all know heard about it. But in the traditional we also include things like the retro walking, which believe it or not, I first saw that in China about 30 years ago.

Steven Sashen
Oh yeah.

Jacques MoraMarco
And I saw them doing at the park and as you know, having practiced Tai chi in repulse the monkey in the yang style for sure it’s based on that, Repulse the monk. They’re walking backward, planting the food. And now I see it’s become so popular. You know, I’m out at the park and I see so many individuals do retro walk, especially when there’s a little bit of an incline, as long as you do it safely.

Steven Sashen
So let’s slow down, let’s slow down. So define the traditional walk and define. Even though it’s just a different language than what people are used to. So define traditional and define retro or any of the other variations within traditional.

Jacques MoraMarco
Yeah, so you know, traditional walk is, you know, basically put one foot in front of the other and going forward, like everyone walks, you know, heel to toe, you know, going through the ball. The retro walking is walking backwards, putting your ball of the foot and then, you know, reversing the walking pattern, which is really good for proprioceptor, it’s very good for your quads, very good for your glutes. And it has all kinds of benefit. Nothing new. It was done 100 years ago by Robert Harmon as a bet he retro walk or walk backwards from San Francisco to New York. And the bet was that he could do it under one year and he did it in 260 days. So for $5,000 he won the bet. Everything was monitored. He had a mirror, please, if you do this backward walking, watch your ground and make sure it’s clear. Best to do on a path. So you know, we talk also about the so called Japanese walking or inter intermittent walking is all included. That’s you know, rapid three minutes faster movement. So. So that’s the first chapter. That’s just kind of an intro talking about the amount of steps, talking about step counting, including just introducing this little device, the mampo guy. This is your original one from 1964. This is where that 10,000 steps came about.

Steven Sashen
You know, do you want, do you want to address the. I’m going to poison the well when I ask the question this way. Do you want to address the 10,000 step mythology?

Jacques MoraMarco
Yes. So. So this is really good question. Thank you for asking it. So in 1964 there was the Olympics in Tokyo and the Manpokai was a pedometer that had a little device in it that would move every step you took. So it went up to 10,000 and that was the myth. You need to do the 10,000 steps. So since that time people say okay, we need to do 10,000 step. However, you know, all the modern science studies health benefits between 4,500 to 7,500, 8,000 step. That is a good phase, but you always have to start somewhere. But yeah, the individual say, well, if 10,000 is good, maybe I should do 20,000. Most people, that’s not going to happen. Yeah. They’re not going to do 20 times.

Steven Sashen
Yeah, no, the whole, the whole thing, it was an advertising campaign. Yeah. And everyone’s like, oh, no, you have to do it. It’s proven. It’s like, no, no, no, no, slow down. It’s sort of like the 10,000hour thing. When Malcolm Gladwell positioned that, the moment I even heard that, I went, oh, that’s complete. And I said it for two reasons. One, I was an all American gymnast and no gymnast has ever put 10,000 hours into anything. And I was also a sprinter and it’s literally not possible to do 10,000 hours of sprinting. So I knew it’s like, you know, what makes you the kind of person that’s going to put in 10,000 hours into something? And even then there’s people who’ve done that who still, you know, they’re mediocre at what they do and there’s savants who, you know right away, whatever the, the thing is, are exceptionally good. So. But it’s just a, you know, good stories capture us even if when they’re just completely obviously not true.

Jacques MoraMarco
Yeah.

Steven Sashen
So be it.

Jacques MoraMarco
So, yeah, so, so that chapter one, chapter two, which is the basic, we call it the Vitality walk. I have to say that I coined that term as a vitality walk. It wasn’t taught as a vitality walk. This is a walk I encountered at the footsteps of the Himalayan region about 50 some years ago where I noticed there were some of these individuals that were walking and they were in at that time I thought they were really old. They look like their mid-50s to 60s. And they were walking really fast and they were counting steps with their breaths. So they were doing two fast inhalation, one exhalation all through the nose and on the next two steps, empty. So it’s a five step routine. So inhale, inhale, exhale, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. So it was a five step pattern. So having, you know, been instructed with that walk, say, you know, what they were doing. And then I started teaching this vitality walk and the patients said, I really feel energized. I really feel like the effect of super oxygenation. The addition to the vitality walk is the mudra. Mudras are specific hand position. If you’ve been in the area that you are, you all know about mudras. So one of the ones that we used in this vitality qua is the admin mudra, the primordial mudra where you just bend very gently your thumb into your palm and then you wrap your fingers around it. This is the primordial mudra. And this mudra, of course in acupuncture the thumb relates to the lung channel and in the middle of the palm you have a point called lagong, very important point. And you have all kinds of meridian system and even ayurvedic system, the representation of the fingers to areas of the body. In the brain, the hand takes a large chunk called the moncula. So the thumb and the hand are really important. So this is the specific mudra that we use for that vitality walk.

Steven Sashen
So this is one of those things where again just the science and research geek in me says, you know, I would love to be able to create a situation where we could test each of these things and see what, what, if any effect the various pieces have. So just the breathing alone, without walking, obviously you can’t just walk. I mean you could just walk alone, that’s one thing. But the breathing alone, breathing with walking, changing it up a little with or without the mudra. This is where I get really intrigued because for whatever reason my, the way my brain works, I like to find the. What’s the word? There’s common factors for like someone wrote a book in psychology about the common factors of every different psychological technique. And basically the common factor is empathetic listening. Like if, if that’s, if that’s the one, that’s the one thing that everything has in common, then there’s maybe one piece that gets added onto that. So I don’t know that anyone’s done, you know, that level of, of like not quite. I mean it can’t be double blinded, random control trial. But it would be interesting to see what the effects of some of these things are since a lot of some of it is something that, well, I mean anything could be tested with a big enough group would be fascinating to find out. Yes.

Jacques MoraMarco
So, and then we move on to the second chapter, which is the mindfulness chapter.

Yun Kim
Yeah, so it comes from the Zen tradition. And so, you know, walking meditation has been part of actually many, many spiritual traditions. And the goal here isn’t to arrive at a destination or you know, to get somewhere or it really is a way to bring awareness to the body to bring awareness to the present moment. So we know that, you know, when we are ruminating with the past can cause depression. When we worry about the future, can cause anxiety. And so research does say that mindful meditation, mindful activity can lessen, lessen the exposure to stress, exposure to ruminative thinking, negative thinking. I don’t know if you’re aware of the research study from 2009 about the telomeres, how mindful meditation can actually enhance or delay cellular aging. Telomeres are protective ends of the chromosomes and they shorten and fray as we age. Also, as you know, with stress exposure, it can fray. So mindful meditation can protect those, those telomeres. It’s, it’s just incredible.

Steven Sashen
Yeah, you just, you just nailed what is probably the common factor for that one, which is reduction of stress. Yeah, so stress is an oxidative process and that’s going to have impact on the telomeres anything you do. This is a thing that when people talk to me about grounding or earthing and I go, this whole idea of magic free electrons, we don’t need to go there. The simple thing is that anywhere that you’re going to be walking barefoot is probably somewhere that’s going to be enjoyable and that is going to be stress reducing. And we know the impact of that. Anything after that is probably hand waving. But that alone is all we need to know. So that’s a good one. Do you want to say any more about the specifics of how you’re applying mindfulness in that walk?

Yun Kim
So we bring attention to our breath, we bring our attention to the feet, we bring attention to our environment. Usually when we walk, we’re probably thinking about something that happened in the past or worrying about the future. But we invite our readers to really sense and feel instead of think. We’re all very good at thinking. We think all the time. It’s wonderful to think. It’s very necessary. But too much thinking can get us into trouble again. Stress and depression, anxiety. And so it’s a way to bring common nervous system and bring us into the parasymptoms, empathetic mode. The rest and digest and relaxation.

Steven Sashen
Can you talk about just. There’s two things. One, the. The idea of paying attention and feeling your feet. Very interesting one for a particular reason from my perspective. And that is when you are attending to something at the other end of your body. Yeah, it’s an interesting phenomenon. It’s very different to pay attention to your breathing versus your feet on the ground. Literally just because of the distance of the Neural connection and how that’s received by the brain. That’s an interesting thing. But can you talk about. I mean, there’. There’s a lot of misconception about mindfulness. People think that it’s not about. It’s like no thinking at all. Yeah. You find yourself having a thought. That’s a problem, et cetera. Can you dive into that? Especially as it applies to walking practice.

Yun Kim
Yeah. So there are misconceptions about emptying the mind that’s sort of thrown about. It’s almost impossible. It’s empty the mind. It’s the nature of the mind to think, and there’s nothing wrong with having thoughts. And so really, my philosophy in the way I’ve been trained in is to let the thoughts come and go. Just don’t attach and don’t reject. Let it come naturally and let it leave naturally. And so, as if you have a choice. It’s the training, the mind. The great meditation teacher Jack Kornfield said it’s like training a puppy. You gently bring it back. Right. You don’t yell at the puppy. You don’t, you know, you. You gently, gently bring it back. Bring the puppy back.

Steven Sashen
My version is there’s no bonus points. There’s no bonus points for staying and there’s no demerits for losing. It’s. It’s. And. And again, you know, for me, when I was doing walking meditation, the thing of, like, trying to just feel as much as you can as. As often as you can, and all those different parts of your foot as it’s in the ground, and it definitely can get in. Very enticing and entrancing, especially if you’re on interesting surfaces.

Yun Kim
Yes.

Steven Sashen
And. And that’s the fun advantage. It’s like you’re giving yourself something to attend to. This idea of. Of either emptying the mind or even paying attention to thoughts, that is so literally palpable.

Yun Kim
Yeah.

Steven Sashen
It’s, you know, it’s a great object. And I always love to say to people, when someone says, you know, let the thoughts happen, like, again, as if you had a choice. Make it a waterfall. Yeah. You’re not making them go away. They’re probably. They’re going away by the time you’re paying attention to. But that’s a whole other story. So, so, so even just in. And if you want to, for the fun of it, because I already kind of led there. If you want to talk about, like, your experience of what it is, like, like moment by moment, when you are paying attention to the foot.

Yun Kim
Yeah, yeah. It does Definitely come to mind. So I teach Qigong Sundays for my patients, their friends and family, and we focus on the feet a lot. Connecting with the earth, feeling the dampness, feeling the coolness. And it helps us to center and to ground. And the feet are amazing. They’re so small. They hold up the entire body. I’m like a huge appreciator of our feet. They’re just amazing. And so just to start with that meditation and to start with that awareness of our feet, it’s incredibly centering. We do it every Sunday and people love it. And again, it brings, brings the energy from our busy mind to our feet and it’s incredibly calming. And Dr. Moramarco can talk about all the amazing acupuncture points around your ankle, on your feet.

Steven Sashen
Yeah, I mean, the ball of the foot.

Jacques MoraMarco
The ball of the foot is a key point. The bubbling spring, the first point on the kidney channel. And then all these points around the ankle dealing with the kidney energy, the stomach and spleen, pancreas, the liver, gallbladder, bladder. So it’s really a very rich area.

Yun Kim
Some of the most powerful acupuncture points are in the extremities in the hands and feet, around the ankles. And so you’re activating all those channels and all those acupuncture points.

Steven Sashen
I’m going to take a weird bit of a tangent. How much, if any, have you been paying attention to, to the research and what people are exploring with the interstitium?

Jacques MoraMarco
Yes, yes, that was very interesting research and what a groundbreaking research in the New York Times was. I think they were courageous enough to put it out.

Steven Sashen
Yeah, well, so for us who don’t know, basically there is a. Effectively a boy. There’s a, a liquid filled network that surrounds every cell in your body and every organ in your body. And at first people just when they were dissecting cadavers or doing whatever surgery they were doing, they just didn’t pay attention to it. They thought it was just maybe, maybe structural, but who knows? But it turns out that it’s. It looks like it’s potentially some kind of communication network. No one has a clue what it’s doing right now or how it’s doing. There is a lot of conversation about, hey, is this related to meridians, chi and all of those things related to acupuncture. And I don’t know where you land on it, but the people that I hang out with are going, we’re not going to stake a claim yet. That would be a little, little aggressive. At the moment, it seems interesting There might be a connection. There might be. And who knows what it’ll be? But let’s just, you know, let’s not get overly eager at this moment. Where, where are you on that for the fun of it?

Jacques MoraMarco
Yeah, I, I, I think, let’s see exactly where will this take us? You know, but the, the interesting idea was the connection with not our standard meridians, which most people have heard, but is the idea of the San Jiao, which connects the three different levels of the body. Sun in Chinese means three. Jiao is burning space or three sectors. So that was very interesting that that was brought in into this article.

Steven Sashen
Yeah. And I love it that some of the traditional Chinese medicine people are like, cool, we’re going to get really serious and study this in a way that, you know, you’re not going to argue with us anymore. And I’m very, I’m, I’m neither optimistic nor pessimistic. I’m very curious to see how that evolves because no matter where it goes, it’s going to be very interesting. No doubt.

Jacques MoraMarco
Yeah. But you know, we have you also been in the field for so many decades, there’s now a newfound respectability because we are at the VA and the VA in 2017. What did they do in 2017? The VA?

Yun Kim
Yeah, it’s, it’s acupuncture is a mandated benefit, congressionally mandated benefit for all veterans in the U.S. either they can get free acupuncture at the VA, as they do at the West LA VA where Dr. MoraMarco and I had been volunteering in the PTSD clinic, or they can get referred to an outside practitioner and the VA will pay for it. This is all because of the robust research on the power of acupuncture, especially for pain management and trauma and ptsd. You know, with the opioid epidemic. Right. We’re all looking into non pharmacological approaches to pain management. And acupuncture is, is very effective, especially in pain management.

Steven Sashen
I mean, I have, I have a joke. We’re not there yet, but I’ll, I’ll share it with you because you’ll appreciate it. I have a joke about some of the Chinese medicine things, especially with all the herbs that the healing power is very simple. You have the first dose and you and your body goes, oh my God, if you’re going to make me take that again, I better get better fat.

Jacques MoraMarco
Yeah, that’s, that’s you when you were young, right?

Yun Kim
Yes, yes. I drank a lot of those potions and yeah, I wanted to get better Very quickly.

Steven Sashen
Yeah, I had some. The Dalai Lama’s doctor gave me something. I said, it’s amazing. This Tibetan dirt tastes a lot like Tibetan dirt. Now that said, he also did the most incredible diagnostic thing that’s ever happened to me. But that’s a whole other conversation that

Jacques MoraMarco
was that Dr. Yusha Dundon.

Steven Sashen
It was, yeah.

Jacques MoraMarco
Wow, that’s amazing. Yeah, I got a chance to meet him in London, probably 1978 or so.

Steven Sashen
Yeah, that was a. I think I met him. Yeah. Somewhere. Somewhere like 82, 83.

Jacques MoraMarco
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. So let me just go through the next chapter, please. The Tai Chi and we call it the Tachy Animal Walks. It’s not Tai Chi walking as it’s become very, very trendy on social media where you can get a six packs in 28 days. AI generated of course. But you know, we just picked three different areas of Tai Chi walking. One of them call it the catwalk, which is the feline walk. The idea of moving all these based on Wato, the great physician Watteau that developed the five Frolics, he was able to observe certain animals in nature and he developed a series of movements, therapeutic movements. So we kind of combined a little bit some of his ideas with the actual Tai Chi. Then we have the Golden Rooster walking from the sun tradition which is basically found in all the Tai Chi style. It’s a one legged stance, the flamingo stance. You find it also in Yoga for balance, fall prevention, of course. And then finally in that chapter we have call it the Spirit Bear Walk. The Spirit Walk of the Bear. It’s mostly come from a style from Shingi, but we gave it a Tai Chi flavor as a non martial movement. Just moving with the idea of having those rounded shoulder tree pattern walk, three step walk. So we try to really give individuals the ability to enhance their fall prevention and that that chapter really helps with fall prevention.

Steven Sashen
I want to back up a, back up a chapter because there’s one thing in there that I really loved for let’s say personal reasons in the Tai Chi walking where you’re emphasizing basically the spine moving and almost being the. In the initiator of movement. And this is something that. So I have a video that I made about walking that’s mostly about, let’s call it traditional walking. First about using your glutes and hamstrings to move you forward. But then I did something that, I don’t know why, it never occurred to me. But I found walking uphill, that same movement that you were talking about where basically you’re sort of well, just have to watch the video. Kind of twisting your way uphill is the way I described it. It’s the same thing that you’re describing because it basically becomes this almost effortless way of moving, especially uphill because as you do that same walking pattern that you’re just in your book uphill, your foot just ends up underneath you every time it lands with no effort. And so you’re just kind of again, twisting your way uphill. And it works downhill also. So just that movement of the upper body in opposition to the lower body, that kind of twisting phenomenon does really, really cool fun things. So I don’t. Didn’t want to leave that one. But now back to the animal walks. Do you want to give an example of, you know, either either one of your, your favorite or just a portion of it so people can get a sense of that in their body as they hear us?

Jacques MoraMarco
Yeah, I mean, you know, the idea Tai Chi for the average person, it’s going to be too complex to learn. Yeah, I mean I’m talking the traditional forms, you know, 108 or 98, you know, they have a lot of repetition then and the repetitions are there for a reason. Just to keep that mindful component. In Tibetan it’s called rigpa. You have to be mindful in Chinese called the E, the mind intent. However, you know, what can you as a walking technique, what can you extract for health benefits? Any of those three walks can bring benefits. So you know, some, some individuals, they want to have an indoor practice. It might get very hot or very cold with a blizzard and it just can, you know, keep up a practice within your living room or even within a room and pick any one of those three movements and work on it.

Steven Sashen
You’re. You made me think of a. This is a very inside Tai Chi joke. How can you tell that you’re in the home of a Tai Chi player? They have no furniture in the living room.

Jacques MoraMarco
Yeah, it looks like this living room.

Steven Sashen
Perfect.

Jacques MoraMarco
Yeah.

Steven Sashen
Okay, so let’s move on to the next walk. And again, it’s just. So what’s so funny? I mean, not haha funny, but it’s. This is something that just, you know, we have no culture history of at all. And yet when you start looking into it, it just seems in a weird way so self evident. Like of course you would do something like this, of course you would experiment with that if you were the kind of person to experiment. But we don’t typically have that. That is part of our culture of just like, you know, be A little more creative, be a little more fun. Have, you know, make this something that you can really start to pay attention to and see what shows up. So let’s move to our next chapter, shall we?

Jacques MoraMarco
Yeah, so, you know, we have the immunity walk. So the immunity walk again, that’s the specific one that I discussed right at the beginning of this conversation with our AIDS patients. And that was the walk that was originally developed by a very famous artist in China named Guadin who had terminal cancer and she went in remission and now it’s incorporated as a support therapy for cancer patients. So you go any park in China in the morning, you have this cancer support group and they’d be doing this walk, which is, it has some similar component as the vitality walk because it has two inhalation, dynamic inhalation and an exhalation. In this case, you’re actually stepping, but you are stepping with the heel and you keep your ankle dorsiflex. So you are stepping side to side. You have the spinal rotation. Your hand is in front of your chest, your thymus glands.

Steven Sashen
Sorry, I was getting confused. I was thinking of this vitality walk when I was referring to before of the spinal rotation part. My apologies.

Jacques MoraMarco
Yeah, yeah, so. So that’s, that’s the spinal rotation. Yeah, it’s that specific gualing walk, the goal in walk. And you know, that’s the one that we used on HIV AIDS patients. Used it a long, long time. And you know, wonderful, wonderful compliance. You know, when people have had those diagnosis and even if they have had cancer diagnosis and are in support groups and I’ve had chemotherapy, radiation or immunotherapy or surgery, they’re very motivated to do it. Yeah. You know, they will do it. And if there is a possibility that can be supportive, then that they will dedicate themselves and even it might require a lot of discipline they will do. And in China this is done two hours in the morning, if they have the energy and the stamina and they have the two hours in the evening meeting. So some of these, these individuals, they go to the park and do it for four hours, a four hour a day commitment practice. And then just to touch, the final walk, you might have heard of it is the bagua, the standard circular walk, which is interesting because walking in a circular pattern is called circumgulation. It’s done in sacred side like the Portola in Lhasa. It’s done around the Mount Kalish. Usually they do it clockwise. The boon tradition and Hindi Islam is done counterclockwise. Even at the, at the Hajj in Medina, they would walk seven times around as their pilgrimage. So you know, that specific walk is really interesting because it really connects to the universe and gives us that understanding. Then way back in antiquities, before Galileo discovered so called, rediscovered the movement of the planets around the sun, that they had an awareness that there was this movement around the solar system. But also they had the awareness that the solar system had also the movement around the galaxy over 250 million times. And some galaxy interesting, some galaxy go clockwise and some galaxy go counterclockwise. So there you have that, that whole idea of circumbulation which has primitive roof and it’s found throughout so many cultures.

Steven Sashen
There’s, there’s something. This is, this is, I mean partly going to be kind of a joke, but partly, partly. I’m really curious. So in the, literally in the last few days, there’s some research that came out showing that human beings, no matter where they live, what culture they came from, naturally tend to go to the left. If they’re turning, they tend to go, go to the left. You know, racetracks go to the left. And if you just have people walking towards each other, our natural inclination go to the left. Of course the, the comical thing would be if a galaxy that’s spinning the other way, do they all go to the right? And then what would happen if those two people from those two galaxies meet? Nobody would ever get anywhere. So, so it is a very interesting thing. Again, this is one of the places where I love to remove some of the, for lack of better term, I don’t want to say mythological, some of the things that are difficult to test or explain about, you know, say connecting to the universe in some way. But there is something undeniable about when you’re moving in a particular pattern and when there’s a repetitiveness to it. And that circular thing is it does something. I haven’t tried to break down what all those pieces are because this goes back to, you know, you’re motivated to do something if you’ve got a good reason. But it’s also really motivating when it’s just really enjoyable or you do get into some delightfully delightful state where your sense of subject and object has changed, where you are less self conscious or self absorbed or self something where there’s just something more happening that’s more interesting than you, you at the moment or you’re, or what you’re imagining, you know is going to happen tomorrow or the day after, whatever. And the Bagua Walker circular walking is definitely one of those things. Of course, I think arguably the extreme version of that is the Sufi, the whirling dervishes, where they’re not walking, they’re just spinning, they’re just going, you know, let’s, let’s make that circle super tight, like less than the width of my shoe. And that’s a very profound way of getting into a serious altered state. So, so do you want to say anything more about the circular walking about.

Jacques MoraMarco
So just, just a, one little note in, in a specific tradition they say you mentioned the walking towards the left is because the heart is more towards the left. So that’s some, some ideas. That’s it, that’s one of the explanation. But who knows, who knows why? I know that in the boon tradition they do do the counterclockwise and in Islam they do counterclockwise. Everybody else is clocking wise.

Steven Sashen
Yeah, yeah. I mean there’s arguments to be made. Oh my God. It was a movie, the name of which I can’t remember. And it was. Oh, it was a guy, he’s in like a Afghani prison or something. He in prison somewhere and all they could do is walk in circles. And then one day he started walking the other way and of course it was. All hell broke loose. I, I’m, I’m always a big fan of that. Whenever everyone’s doing it one way. Let’s see what happens if you do it the other way. You know, fun. So, so when you put all this together, how would you, when, I mean, and I’m going to encourage people to, to grab the book. How would you, how do you advise people to start playing with this in a way that frankly doesn’t seem. Well, if somebody feels like they’re, they want to do it for a particular reason, what guidance do you give them? And if someone is just exploring it for the sake of exploring, how do you recommend that?

Yun Kim
One simple thing that they can start with is just the Mudra. So fold your thumb into the middle of the palm. There’s a wonderful acupuncture point there called the Lagong. Fold their hands over the thumb and the thumb is where the lung channel resides. And so you’re activating the respiratory system and just start with the Mudra. And I had a patient who got the book and she said she just incorporated the Mudra into her daily walk and she, she was able to be more energized and walk up the hill faster. And so you can start there and I.

Jacques MoraMarco
You don’t need to use your phone.

Yun Kim
Oh, yes, yes. It’s wonderful because you can’t, you can’t use your phone.

Steven Sashen
That’s great.

Yun Kim
Added benefit.

Jacques MoraMarco
Yeah. When we were at the monastery, Deer Park Monastery, we heard a story of this walking meditation in, in the hills outside Hong Kong. The individual was actually texting, say, I am presently doing walking meditation.

Yun Kim
It’s a really a terrible addiction. And so we recommend leaving your phone at home or turning it off and leaving it in a little, little backpack and, and do the mudra. Do the breath work, put it together with the steps and start with a Bhai Tadi walk. It’s very accessible, very simple. Almost everyone can do it. And we’ve taught it for many years in a class. And it’s very interesting. It’s a concentration practice. So students have reported that they’re not really thinking about, you know, what’s to come or what had happened before. They’re really counting. And so it’s a very powerful meditative practice. Also has the added benefits of a breath work. Calms the nervous system, activating the lung meridian and the Laogang.

Steven Sashen
Yeah.

Jacques MoraMarco
And the other thing is just intuitively today I really feel like I need to work on my balance for whatever the reason you feel like you need that little extra support or that extra confidence, you know, depending where you are in your phase of life. And you know, maybe you heard, oh, somebody has fallen and broken a hip, unfortunately, and you don’t want to be statistically significant after the age of 65 for that one year critical period. I want to work on my balance. Maybe I’m gonna focus today on the Tai Chi world walks or I really want to be more self reflective with the Bagua walk. So it’s very much an intuitive process. And in the book we do, you know, have a few different programs where they can mix and match a few different walks, try them out, you know. But the key thing is to start to make that effort, just that even five minute commitment that today I’m gonna commit to five minutes, whatever it is, and then build up on that.

Steven Sashen
Yeah, I’m glad you said that because especially Americans have this fun is for. Give me the paint by numbers. Just tell me exactly what to do, how many steps, how many minutes, how many, whatever. It, it takes people a while to. I mean, it could be helpful to start that way, but because, I mean, you know, it’s just, it’s an almost human thing. I don’t want to suggest this is a problem. I think it literally comes with the wiring that we want to have a plan that we think will get us to what we want, which is what we think will make us happy, despite the fact that we’re really bad at predicting what will make us happ and we’re worse at remembering how bad we are at it. So that’s, you know, the problem. But we still have that urge for like, give me the thing that’s going to get to what I want. And so to give people a little something to start and then hopefully give them the, ironically the instruction to not pay as much attention to that and to become just more aware of is this the right time, is this right whatever. Like, it’s funny, I just thought of this. My wife and I had a month long vacation, which was fascinating because it really did. We really did come back with a different sense of time and space and how we want to use our time and our energy. And when I’m walking the dog, I used to have a, you know, couple of paths that were pretty reliably 45 minutes. And then it started being I’m just going to walk as long as I want to walk for whatever I want to do because he’s going to go with me. And then every now and then I’m in a rush and all I got is 30 minutes. And either way it’s like, it’s fine either way. And that’s. I’d never had a dog before, so having, you know, a set time was an important phase and now the not set time is the important phase. So hopefully people will explore this with that same kind of like, here’s a way to start and then here’s a place where it’s going to take, take on its own life for you. Is there anything I missed?

Yun Kim
Importance is the regularity to do a practice even for 10 minutes every single day. Try a little challenge, you know, two weeks or 30 days, that, that is really, really important. The effects are cumulative. You know, it’s not like you’re gonna, you know, suddenly transform after, you know, a week of practice, but it’s, you know, this is lifelong practice. And so start today, start, you know, for 10 minutes. Everyone can find 10 minutes.

Steven Sashen
I just thought of, I thought of even the micro version of that. I’m thinking the places where you wouldn’t look weird doing it because people would notice because everyone else is basically doing something similar. And that’s Costco on a Sunday afternoon where, you know, you’re taking your time going down an aisle. Nobody would have any clue that you’re not doing what everybody else is doing, which is getting in my way. I love it.

Yun Kim
I love it. And we’ve also had patients doing it in the pool. Some of our elderly patient, they love it because they feel really safe. No fear of falling, you know, shallow, shallow pool. And they’re doing, doing the walks and they said it’s, it’s great. So we need to include that in our next in our reprints.

Steven Sashen
My neighborhood. You’ll see anyone doing anything. There’ll be people walking backwards. There’ll be people, people walking with, you know, various kinds of weight fasts, some homemade, some very expensive. I mean, everything you can think of, there are people doing it. And so, you know, you could get away with murder around here. Nobody would pay any attention. So. Pardon me one second. I gotta check something really quickly. Oh, this is really crazy. I’m gonna pause for a moment because my computer is telling me that my battery is running low, so I gotta find out what’s going on. Hold on one moment. This makes no sense. Give me one sec. Hoping, hoping. I just fixed it, but no, it seems. Oh, wait, there we go. Now it’s fixed. I just hadn’t had it plugged in. All right, that’ll get edited out, obviously. Okay, so, so, so anything that I missed, anything else, we need to.

Jacques MoraMarco
We covered. We covered.

Steven Sashen
Here’s the obvious part. Tell people how they can find the book and how they can find you.

Yun Kim
You. You can find it anywhere. Where the books are sold on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and, and Target. And we also have a website with information about the book, our upcoming events and workshop. It’s just walking your way to vitality.com and for some of your listeners who are in LA or in Santa Monica, we have a live event at the Santa Monica Public Library on Wednesday, August 19th at 2:00pm it’s free and open to the public. And we’re going to be talking about some of the concepts in the book. And there’ll be a Q and A. There’ll be sound meditation. It will be a wonderful opportunity to engage with, with our, our audience.

Steven Sashen
So keep in mind, some people will be listening to this after that date. So most people, you’ll have to walk fast enough to go back in time like Superman did, and then you can attend, attend before you actually left.

Yun Kim
So we’ll have other events in the future.

Steven Sashen
There we go. And I’m assuming, I’m sure it’ll be on the website. So thank you. Thank you both. This has really been a pleasure. I will say the number of times people reach out to me, saying, hey, do you want to talk to the following thing that it’s like, no, but, you know, what you’re doing is something that. Obviously from my own experience, but I don’t want to just have it based on my own experience. There’s a there. There to this.

Yun Kim
Yeah.

Steven Sashen
And as we were saying, you know, the. There might be a little different than what people are saying, but you can find out for yourself. And then who cares? If you want to have a good story that, you know, you can’t justify, knock yourself out. If you want to go, hey, I do this and that. It’s wonderful for me, then that’s good enough. I don’t think. I don’t think you would complain if someone says, I don’t believe a word you said other than, hey, this is great. So. Which is one of the reasons that I reached out is I got that sense just from the way that you guys reached out to me. So it was a real pleasure.

Jacques MoraMarco
Thank you for having us.

Yun Kim
Always a pleasure. Talking to a fellow Tai Chi practitioner.

Steven Sashen
Well, I must confess that I haven’t been doing Tai Chi for a while because As a gymnast 33 years ago, I landed and twisted at the same time and heard that noise coming from my knee. And my lack of cartilage has made practicing, or at least practicing the way I like to not pleasant and even worse. Actually, I’ll say this even more because other than just doing the practice myself and doing the form itself, doing push hands and doing things with other people, that’s very difficult to find people who know how to do that or treat it well or seriously. I mean, I have been known to walk up to people who are doing Tai Chi somewhere and saying. Usually saying, hey, don’t do that. Because they’re. They’re doing. They’ve. They’re doing something excessive and something you’ll appreciate. There’s something as little as they’re holding their wrist in a way that they’re trying to communicate some personality, something instead of doing what’s actually natural and appropriate. That sounds really weird, and it sounds a little pompous, but. But, you know, part of doing the practice is getting the you out of it so that there’s. There’s not an obstacle in the way of what you’re trying to accomplish. Conversely, there was one time in an airport where I had to walk up to a guy when he finished doing the form. I went, thank you. And it turned out he was one. He was one of Professor Chen’s students.

Jacques MoraMarco
Oh, wonderful.

Steven Sashen
Yeah. So that was like. It was just like, I had so much fun watching. And fortunately, we both had to catch a plane. We didn’t have time to do push hands would have been good. Super, super fun. That’s a whole other story. Anyway, some of you who are listening probably don’t even know what the hell I just said. Doesn’t matter. Thank you for being here. Don’t forget, go over to www.jointhemovementmovement.com Previous episodes, all the ways you can engage with the podcast and find us on social media and give us a thumbs up and a like and five stars. All the rest. That’s how you’re part of building this, of this movement. Movement, essentially. If you want to be part of the tribe, just subscribe. If you have anything you want to ask me or tell me people that you think should be on the show, comments, questions, whatever. If you think I have a case of cranial rectal reorientation syndrome, whatever you want to share, just drop me an email that’s at move at or just moveoin themovementmovement.com and until whatever is next, go out, have fun and live life feet first.